


Got Your Back

by BlossomsintheMist



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Artificial Intelligence, Artificial Respiration, Brain Damage, Coma, Gen, Serious Injuries, dying character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-05 06:37:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1090783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlossomsintheMist/pseuds/BlossomsintheMist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Sorry, honeybear,” the voice says.  “I’m T.O.N.Y., I run the suit.  I’m an A.I., like J.A.R.V.I.S. only more fun—no offense to J.A.R.V.I.S., of course.  I’m supposed to help you out.  I guess Iron Man does have a sidekick now, huh?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Got Your Back

“C’mon, Tone,” Rhodey says, and even he can hear how his voice strains, hitches, over the words, hoarse and rough.  “This isn’t funny, Martini.  I need you to stop fooling around and get back out there.”

Tony doesn’t answer.  His eyes don’t even so much as flutter, and there isn’t any sound but the hissing rasp of the ventilator.  His skin is sallow, paler than normal, his eyelashes very dark against it, and he doesn’t twitch.  His skin feels dry and warm when Rhodey moves to brush hair back off his forehead, takes his limp hand.  He doesn’t care if Tony can hear him, he’s going to act as if he can. 

He’d thought Tony in the hospital after Afghanistan had been bad, but it’d had nothing on this.  “Hey, man,” he says, covering that limp hand with both of his.  “You’d better come back.  How am I supposed to upgrade my suit without you?”

Tony just lies there, still and quiet and doesn’t answer.  Monitors beep and his hand is warm, his pulse even under Rhodey’s fingers, but he can’t help but think how dead he looks.  He swallows and holds his hand tighter.

He can’t spend all his time in the hospital, he knows that.  Besides, the nurses would kick him out.  But when he leaves he can’t settle, can’t rest.  He doesn’t know what he’s doing, just that he can’t sit around going stir crazy, thinking about Tony limp and still and with tubes down his throat in the hospital, how he might not ever wake up.  He couldn’t help feeling like he could have done something, he could have been there, could have taken the hit that had jumbled Tony’s brains, anything.  How had he not been there?

He stays with Pepper a little, lets her hold onto him and try not to cry into his shoulder.  It’s the least he can do.  He tells her it’ll be okay, that this won’t be enough to beat Tony, but he doesn’t know for sure.

It’s the next day when he gets the message.  In it Tony tells him to become Iron Man, tells him there’s a new suit, one he designed for him, that he needs Rhodey to continue the legacy, to not let Iron Man become nothing but a weapon, that Rhodey is the only one he can trust to do this, the only one who would understand. That he needs a "moral rudder" for the company, for this job, for the Iron Man thing, and that's him, him and Pepper.  That Tony’s so fucking sorry for being such a fuck-up and screwing everything up, and Rhodey’s smiling, sad, to himself, until Tony gets to the part about Rhodey being a good man, and a hero, and how much he meant to him, and chances are he never told Rhodey much his friendship had meant to him, and Rhodey doesn’t know if he’s going to be able to take this.  When Tony says, “You were a better friend to me than I ever deserved,” Rhodey almost turns the message off, and doesn’t just because these might be Tony’s last words to him; he’s going to hear them through all the way the first time.  Tony says that he wants Rhodey to keep fighting the good fight, in the end, that he hopes he’ll keep getting in the suit, putting on the armor.  Being the great man, the hero that Tony knows Rhodey can be.  So that now everyone will be able to see it. (The goddamn soft little crooked half-smile he gets in the video when he says it, too, the look in his eyes, and—fuck.)

Fucking Tony Stark.

Tony looks smaller the next time he goes to the hospital, somehow.  The doctors are talking about brain damage and Rhodey doesn’t want to listen.

When he puts on the suit for the first time, it’s an amazing feeling, and he feels disloyal to his own girl, to the War Machine, for reveling in the way the smooth plates of metal feel moving with him, but it feels wrong, too, like he’s playing at being something he isn’t.  At being Tony.  This is Tony’s suit, and Tony will always be Iron Man.  Rhodey’s just … taking over for a while, that’s all.

When he hears Tony’s voice in his ears, he almost jumps out of his skin, and for a second he feels this stupid little lurch of hope in his chest, even though he knows it’s crazy; Tony is in the hospital, in a special ward, in a hospital bed, but he can’t help thinking that Tony must have just come down the steps into his garage the way he always did, and this is so very much his space that he can almost see it—

“Tony?” he gasps.

“Sorry, honeybear,” the voice says.  “I’m T.O.N.Y., I run the suit.  I’m an A.I., like J.A.R.V.I.S. only more fun—no offense to Big J, of course.  I’m supposed to help you out, all that stuff.  I guess Iron Man does have a sidekick now, huh?”

It sounds like Tony, exactly like Tony, and for a moment Rhodey wants to take the helmet off so he doesn’t have to hear it, because his throat is thick and he can’t breathe.  But he doesn’t want the voice to stop.

“And it’s you?” he finally manages to stutter out.  “That’s irony for you, big guy.”

“Ha,” the A.I. with Tony’s voice, that sounds just like Tony says, “I thought you were the big gun all along, are you going back on that now, Lt. Colonel Badass?  Because this isn’t really the best time.”

Rhodey takes a deep breath, and it’s shaking, trembling.  He blows it back out, tries to steady himself.  There’s a moment of silence.

“Hey.  Are you going to be all right?” Tony’s voice says, and it sounds so much like Tony, if he closes his eyes he can imagine that that’s Tony voice, over the comm, they’re in a fight and Tony’s checking up on him—

“I don’t know, man,” he says.  “I don’t know.”  There's a moment, just another moment, of silence, and he tries to catch his breath, to breathe evenly, but he can hear it too loud in his ears, filtering through the suit's systems.

“Wanna run through the new specs?” the A.I. says, and its voice is just as full of the bouncing eagerness Tony would have put into that question.  Just like Tony.  Doesn't know how to deal with feelings.  Not that Rhodey's much better.

“Sure,” Rhodey says, because he’s never been able to deny Tony much of anything when he has that eager enthusiasm in his voice.  “Show me the ropes.”


End file.
